with Britt Reints
Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.
You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.
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In case you missed the news, the White House is hosting a “Forum on Workplace Flexibility” today. According to press releases, President Obama and the First Lady are planning to talk about “creating workplace practices that allow America’s working men and women to meet the demands of their jobs without sacrificing the needs of their families.”
In other words - all that stuff we’ve been trying to figure out on our own forever.
Although, I have to admit that it never even occurred to me that my employer should be concerned with making my work-life balance easier. I just assumed that my husband and I should have to figure that out the best we could. I’m having a hard time even wrapping my brain around the idea that CEOs and small business owners might be considering policy changes that promote a better work-life balance.
But if that were true… it would be pretty exciting.
Maybe that will mean that fathers start to have more opportunities to be actively involved parents, because I know a lot of men who feel like their employers aren’t sympathetic to family responsibilities (like child sick days, special events, etc.) Maybe companies will take a closer look at their vacation policies. Or maybe… what?
What changes could be made at your workplace that would improve your ability to “to meet the demands of you job without sacrificing the needs of your family”?
If you have ideas, you can leave them in the comments here OR watch the forum live onWhiteHouse.gov/live and offer your own feedback via Facebook and Ustream.
Photo by MVI on Flickr.
I am fortunate enough that I have a ton of flexibility in my job. I get paid to produce a monthly newsletter. Beyond that, I come and go as I please. It’s part-time and pays as such, which is a drawback, but it works for my family’s needs.
Finn | March 31st, 2010 at 7:45 am
What can the President do for me? He can keep his nose, his regulations, and my tax money out of private industry.
It has long been recognized that workplace flexibility is a motivating factor for attracting and retaining certain kinds of employees, and the big businesses that are interested in such employees have been experimenting with work-life flexibility programs for years - without the government telling them they have to do it. It makes business sense for some businesses. It doesn’t make business sense for others. As an individual, we have the choice to work for companies who do or don’t offer workplace flexibility, to go into business for ourselves, or to not work at all while other things in life take precedence. I would like to keep it that way.
SKL | March 31st, 2010 at 8:03 am
I’ve always found it to be important to be concerned with work-life balance, as a boss. It makes for happier, more productive employees every single time.
Avitable | March 31st, 2010 at 8:08 am
I don’t think it is something you can regulate. And often, I think if you try to regulate something, you make it more stringent & less useful than what might develop organically.
I wanted to be on the principal selection committe at my child’s school. It woudl be a hellish amount of time investment over a 3 month period. So I worked out a plan, what it would entail, went to my supervisor with the proposal; what I would be unable to do timewise and what I could pick up in another area to make up for it. And we hammered out a way to make it work.
If there were “guidelines” would we have been able to do something so crazy? I don’t know, I think mandating can make employers less willing to do what they might otherwise on a case by case basis.
Mich | March 31st, 2010 at 9:45 am
I have a great boss and therefore, great flexibility in what I do (to a point - I’m also an Emergency Responder, so when the shit flies, all bets are off). My husband, however, has been looking for a while now that our daughter is in daycare…and from a more blue-collar perspective, there is no flexibility.
He was offered a job that was then retracted when they learned that he had equal share in childcare and would need to amend his schedule for those days and weeks when I wasn’t available (deployed, TDY, etcetera). He having little luck finding any dealership or garage (mechanic by trade) that’s sympathetic to a father actually
a. Wanting to be with his family
and
b. Needing to be available for child pick-up, drop-off or weekend care.
It’s both frustrating and depressing for him and I feel terribly that my job has taken such a forward seat…
But the president of the US? I’m pretty sure he’s not going to do anything in the end except talk about it to restore our hope. Frankly, I don’t think it’s on him to regulate employers to that level anyway. That’s just a little creepy, really…
Phe | April 1st, 2010 at 8:14 am
Work-Life balance is a challenge for every working mother, father, care-giver. I work in the customer service business dealing with a company that is 24/7. I, for one, did not have to work Easter. My boyfriend… did. I also had to work Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving (my bf had to work Thanksgiving though), Christmas Eve (I believe he had to work that day too), New Years eve (we were both off New Years day but our company was still open). He just had to work Easter, I don’t have my son’s birthday off. So… the work-life balance right now pretty much is bad. We don’t have weekends off, we work nights and trying to change our schedules. Maybe Obama can help with companies understand that there are people who prefer to work at night, but parents would rather tuck their kids into bed and have a traditional family dinner. Heres to change.
Katie | April 4th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I have to agree that I don’t think this is a topic that needs government involvement. The idea that the government knows better about my life than I do is a bit insulting. I choose my jobs based on what my life needs. I certainly don’t need Washington to tell me what’s best.
If you put companies in a place of mandated regulations you always slow progress. You take the personal side of a company right out of it. The balance of life-work-family, it’s not supposed to be so easy that we just turn to Big Brother for guidance. You are an adult. Figure out your life. Make your own balance. We need to stop waiting for others to fix our problems for us. How can we teach our children to solve their own problems if we keep wanting to government to solve ours? They’re not smarter than we are just because they hold office.
Cathy | April 5th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I’m going with “not a dang thing”, really, other than to make us all feel good as Phe indicated. Those of us who aren’t in the blue collar world and work for a “human being” do have a certain amount of flexibility; those of us who aren’t working for a human being…well, til they find a way to legislate “be a freaking human”, not much to do there.
CV | April 6th, 2010 at 9:23 am
I’m late to the party, but it’s an interesting comment.
The number one way my employer could help with my work-life balance is to have realistic expectations about what a single human being can accomplish (and with quality) in a 40-45 hour week, and if more needs to be done, to staff accordingly. My workload is overwhelming, and my company is in a hiring freeze. I haven’t had a raise in two years. And yet, when people approach me to take on new projects–projects that are great ideas–and I ask for support either by taking something off my plate or by giving me budget to hire freelance or (gasp) an employee, I’m told no. And so I’m finding that I am spending more and more time WORRYING about work when I’m not at work, and when I should be in the moment with my daughter or my husband, or meditating, or sleeping. For me, it’s not about flexibility in hours, because I’ve only once had a professional job that was inflexible and I didn’t stay there long. It’s about remembering that I need a life away from work, and from worrying about work, in order to be excellent at my job. And the more that’s piled on me, the less efficient I become. I”m afraid to have a frank discussion because I get 5 resumes a week from people looking for jobs like mine.
It’s a white collar issue that I’m hearing about more and more from my colleagues, and as I search for a new job I”m finding that most at my level (manager/director-ish) are now combos of 2-3 jobs. This issue would be difficult to legislate or make rules for. It’s a human issue.
lynn @ human, being | April 21st, 2010 at 10:17 pm